New Franklin School keeps minds, bodies sharp during summer

PORTSMOUTH — Although sliding sounds like a fun activity, New Franklin School Principal George Shea says teachers are always looking for ways to prevent summer slides.

Crystal A. Weyers

PORTSMOUTH — Although sliding sounds like a fun activity, New Franklin School Principal George Shea says teachers are always looking for ways to prevent summer slides.

The slide he was referring to is the trend for many students to academically regress between June and the end of August, before returning to the classroom. In an effort to prevent students from falling behind this fall, three weeklong summer mini-camps are being offered to the city's third- through fifth-graders.

"This is just another ingredient in that stew of opportunities," Shea said of citywide programs available to students over the summer months. "They all work to keep the mind engaged in different ways."

Instead of video game controllers, students were picking up their feet and engaging their brains early Wednesday morning. A group of participating students had already run several laps around the field at New Franklin, recorded their results and learned how to do a standing long jump.

"How did it feel, how do your muscles feel?" asked fifth-grade teacher Karen Jacoby, who is one of the teachers in the first summer mini-camp, "Mathletics: Track Math."

Jacoby, who serves as New Franklin's track coach and math tutor during the school year, told the students that even though they might feel "horrible," they were improving with each day and learning techniques to lessen those stomach cramps.

"The more you do it, the better it feels," she said.

On Thursday, the students will graph the week's results to see just how much they improved in a variety of track-based activities. The mini-camp, which got the kids moving, was also a valuable lesson that connected track events to the math involved with them.

"There's a lot of math in track," Jacoby said, adding that their activities stemmed from those seen in the Olympics. "But, because the Olympics are in metric, the students can't compare their results without learning how to do the conversions."

Shea said each mini-camp targets a "different educational niche," with the first being sports math, the second being writing through the graphic novel medium and the third featuring inquiry-based investigations in science and technology on "how stuff works."

Superintendent Ed McDonough said, "I think what's exciting about this, is that it offers opportunities for students to cover some content in a new and different way. You see them outside and in the classroom and they have smiles on their faces."

Bill Duncan, longtime education activist and member of the state Board of Education, helped raise the funds for the camps through private donors.

"It's great to see these kids so engaged," he said.

Many of the students who were targeted to participate have limited cultural and academic opportunities over the eight-week summer break. Often running along economic lines, these students face an educational disparity that often takes them several months to close.

"These kids often backslide more during the summer, leaving them less able to read and do numbers, and they never catch up," Duncan said. "The same kids are candidates for dropping out when they're older, so this works to close that gap by helping to build the foundation and head off that backslide."

Shea said although hard numbers aren't yet available to illustrate the benefits of year-round learning, a comparable summer reading program offered to incoming first-graders through Title I funds, called "You've Got Mail," spoke volumes. Of those targeted for the program, 66 percent returned to school reading at a higher level. On average, without the program, only 5 percent of students would see those results.

"Summer programming definitely heads off summer slump," Shea said.

This year, the mini-camps weren't fully lined up until June, leaving little time to recruit parents who may be interested in the programs for their children. Shea said cutbacks in the district's Title I budget over the past few years have left little in the way of summer funding.

"It was a bit of a scramble," he said of raising the funds.

Shea, Duncan and McDonough all hope the funding can become part of the annual school budget so that more students can benefit. There have already been meetings with the School Board on the topic and they will present their findings before budget season this fall.

"The district and the school are going above and beyond to reach kids who are at risk of falling behind," Duncan said. "I think we can all get behind the notion of asking 'what can we do for these kids over the summer?'"

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